


Harvesting the Sun

by octonaut



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bikers, Chickens, Depression, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Eventual Smut, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pigs, Plot, Slice of Life, Slow Burn, Solar Farmer AU, Trans Junkrat | Jamison Fawkes, farmer au, roadrat - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-19
Updated: 2017-01-15
Packaged: 2018-09-09 22:16:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8915095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/octonaut/pseuds/octonaut
Summary: The Omnium was never sabotaged. The sweltering stretch of desert known as the Red Centre remains the home of solitary souls and a lot of fucking sand.
Their mission accomplished, most of the Australian Liberation Front disbanded, but those with nowhere else to go took to a small town in the heart of the desert where their anger grew wild and untamable.
Four years later, Mako can’t forgive himself for the things he’s done. He’s accepted that he’ll always be alone—considers his life of solitude a deserved penance. It could be worse out here on the solar farm. At least he’s got his pigs and chickens.
But everyone in town has something to say about him and none of it has to do with letting him live the rest of his life in peace. Old grudges burn brighter than ever; friends turned enemies won’t leave him the fuck alone.
It’s all just another day in the miserable life of Mako Rutledge… until a scruffy thief with eyes like embers and a lonely past of his own steals more than just Mako’s equipment.





	1. Chapter 1

The sun beats down on the red sand of the Australian Outback. Little skinks scramble across sizzling rocks in search of cover beneath dry mulga shrubs. It’s hot. Too hot. Good for business, which is just how Mako likes it.

He drums his fingers along a cracked steering wheel as his Jeep putters down the barren dirt road. The breeze is gentle today—not enough to disturb the shrubs or jostle his loose ponytail. Nice day to stay home and sit in front of a fan, he thinks regrettably as his little house in the middle of nowhere shrinks in the rear view. The great field of solar arrays beside it shrinks too until it’s nothing more than a shimmering line behind him, a shade of blue barely darker than the cloudless sky. Looks almost like a river when he squints, and he fantasizes about dipping his toes into cool water until he rounds the line of trees that separates his property from the highway.

_Snap out of it,_ he thinks. _Eyes on the road._

Mako flexes his shoulder blades as a line of sweat crawls down his broad back. It’s hot. Too fucking hot. Truly would’ve been a nice day to stay home if the bastard fridge wasn’t empty.

It’s the same old bumpy ride as he takes off down the highway, the lone person in a blistering desert, the only car on the road.

The horizon eventually takes the shape of a dusty little town in the distance. A foreigner (not that they get many tourists this deep in the bush) might call it a mirage at first but Mako knows this land like the back of his hand. He sees the familiar roof of the general store and the minuscule drugstore beside it, the rickety spire of the less familiar church reaching crookedly skyward behind them. Beyond the bricks of the police station lies the rest of the town—the bottle shop and pub and a musty bank; a multitude of neighborhoods, each one smaller than the last. Mako can’t see them from here—rarely sees them at all, actually—but he knows that little shacks dot the desert beyond the borders of civilization. It’s a shit town with a name that doesn’t matter—can’t even find it on a map these days—but it’s home. On good days, anyway. He’s not sure if today’s one of them.

The highway leads him right into the heart of town. He pulls up along the footpath outside the supermarket and something gives a loud whine—not sure if it’s the brakes that do it or his bones. It’s a guaranteed pain in the ass either way and he lets out a low groan.

His sunglasses don’t quite block out the relentless stare of the sun and the dust mask covering his mouth doesn’t quite keep the sand off his tongue. It’s dry and gritty, makes him hack out a cough his bad lungs don’t exactly appreciate. He lets out a particularly grating wheeze as he lumbers out of the Jeep—hits the pavement with another groan that makes the woman standing nearby turn to face him in alarm.

“All right there, Rutledge?” she asks. There’s a smile on her face but something about the way her palm flies to her child’s chest to steer him away from Mako makes it look insincere. Imagine that.

“Fine,” Mako mutters, hand on his back. _Not fine. Spine broken. Call for help._

She nods before wasting no time in making a quick getaway, dragging her kid behind her like a sack of meat. Smiling all the while, to add insult to injury. Smiling like she’s looking to pull all the muscles in her face.

Same as usual, then. He heaves out a sigh, doesn’t bother locking up before heading inside the store. Not because it’s a dinged up convertible without a top, but because the Jeep is an odd shade of dark green like an evergreen forest. Unmistakable in this red wasteland—no one else has anything like it. No one but Mako. No one but Rutledge.

And you’d have to be mental to fuck with Rutledge, right?

Mako frowns, keeps his head down like he always does.

The door to the supermarket disturbs a bell as he enters. It rings louder for him than it’s ever done for anyone else on this godforsaken continent, he’s damn sure, because everyone waiting in the queue suddenly turns to look at him. And hell, the lot of them light up with their fake smiles like he wishes they wouldn’t, blinding him with fluorescent teeth. Blocking their children from view with their bodies, hands in their pockets to safeguard their belongings or clutch their switchblades if they’re feeling cheeky. Like they think he can’t see. Always like they think he doesn’t notice.

“Morning, Mr. Rutledge,” says the young cashier, far too chipper for the bags under his eyes. He’s got about five people he needs to ring up but Mako has his full attention. Doesn’t want it. All these eyes feel like needles in his skin.

He ignores them. All of them. It’s easier this way. He’s pretty sure he hears a relieved sigh as he walks by the queue and it echoes a hundred times in his head.

He feels like a giant, lumbering and clumsy and drawing eyes, too many eyes, as he shuffles down narrow aisles. Tries to act like he doesn’t see all the leftover Valentine’s Day junk on every shelf but the colors are even brighter than the obnoxious clearance stickers on everything.

He keeps his head down, resisting the urge to punch heart-shaped boxes of chocolates in half, until he’s at the back of the store. He doesn’t realize he’s still not alone until after he’s retrieved a jug of milk from the cooler. There’s a guy just down the row of freezers, eyes wide and staring like he’d run into the Prime Minister at the pub. The sunglasses don’t stop Mako from shooting the guy a raised eyebrow and lifting the jug like he’s making a toast.

_It’s milk, asshole._

“Good to see you, Rutledge,” the man manages. He’s still standing there with his hand stuck in the freezer, fingers turning blue around a jug of low-fat.

“Hm,” is all Mako says before he makes his escape. As soon as his back is turned, he hears the guy hiss in pain and rub his hands furiously together.

Got the milk. Next is bread. He skips the eggs. Pauses in the cereal aisle, gives it a long hard think before grabbing a box of Coco Pops. Picks up a few cans of Cambell’s chicken noodle, a new can opener. Winds up in the cereal aisle again and snatches a second box of Coco Pops.

He’s dumping his finds into a basket when he sees them. Giggling by the frozen meats like his hair isn’t gray and her joints aren’t beginning to rust. Something sour twists in his gut at the sight of them. His lips curl into a scowl when she plants a cold metal kiss on the man’s sagging cheek. You know, Mako had been pretty pleased about his bounty of double Coco Pops but now he’s sorely tempted to throw a box at each of their heads and be done with it.

They’re old. They’re decrepit. They’re living in the bowels of the outback with nowhere else to go in life. Due to die any day now. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe in five minutes.

But Logan smiles like he always does, and Emily’s eyes glow blue as she giggles, and their trembling old hands intertwine like a gaggle of withered vines.

He doesn’t hate them because she’s an omnic. Doesn’t even hate them because they run the only other farm nearby. They’re no competition to him.

No, he supposes he’s just a petty cunt. Mako detests them both because they’ve got something to smile about in the first place, and he loathes the slab of chicken breast they pick together out of the ice.

He wheels away from them but they linger in his thoughts like smoke.

_Can’t even let a couple of old folks be happy, can you?_

_You’ll get yours,_ says the quiet protest of his knees. _Be as decrepit as that, and soon. Only… you won’t have someone there to pick you up when you fall, or to remind you when you start forgetting things._

_Did it to yourself, y’know._

He stops himself before that train of thought runs wild again. He lived his life. Made his choices, can’t change the ones he regrets. Live with it, Mako. You did it to yourself.

He supposes it started when he dropped out of high school. The education wouldn’t have helped him in the years to come but the people he left behind might have. Friends, good mates, a boyfriend. He left them all in the face of the Omnic Crisis. War in the streets, blood in the sand. The schools closed down and he never went back. His parents were slaughtered by machines. Still doesn’t know what happened to everyone else. He didn’t go back, didn’t look back.

He spent the rest of his youth protesting the government, fighting to keep the land that belonged to him and his. The Australian Liberation Front. His world became one of fighting and sabotage. He grew into a rebel and a killer, shaped by the horrors of war. They accomplished their goal eventually, won back their land when they threatened to sabotage the Omnium itself, but by then everyone he loved was already dead.

His time is spent. He’ll never be Logan, an old man grinning despite the sag of his skin. He’ll never be Emily, never have someone to care for who isn’t a rotting corpse in the ground. It’s hard to imagine but he supposes he could’ve had a normal life… if he hadn’t been so busy slaughtering anyone who got in his way.

He’s not particularly religious but who knows—maybe God had sent him the perfect man, a husband fashioned out of flawless gold just for him, and Mako had accidentally killed the poor bastard in his days of endless bloodlust. The thought makes him snort. Maybe God is a fucking idiot.

He feels like he’s been inside this store for far too long by the time he pushes his basket across to the cashier. Not the young one. Mako made a point to avoid him. This woman is mature enough to wear her plastic smile without sweat dripping down her forehead.

She gives him a bright look as she rings up his things. “I’m kinda surprised you still buy milk from us, Rutledge,” she says. It sounds rehearsed, like she’s been thinking on it ever since she saw him come through the door. “Could be making your own out on the farm.”

“I’m not a rancher,” he mutters.

“But you got animals though, right?”

“Some.”

“Then why don’t you have any cows?”

“Because,” he says. Passes her a few fivers. “I’m not a rancher.”

He takes his bags and tries to sneak out the door with as little fanfare as possible—but there goes that damn bell, and around twists the queue, and the young cashier’s trembling lips part in a grin.

“Have a good day, Mr. Rutledge!”

Mako can’t get out fast enough.

The silence from his Jeep is the first decent hello he’s heard all day. It’s still sitting there in the dust where he left it and he pats its flank fondly once he’s loaded his groceries into the passenger seat. He’s about to clamber in when he spots a pair of foreboding shapes parked further down the road. Weren’t there when he first got here, and that sets him on edge. Two hefty tires to each of them, broad handlebars and sun-bleached paint, and the things they do to him are bizarre, make his heart ache with longing and his gut churn with dislike. Just a couple of choppers to any foreigner, but this town welcomes no outsiders. To the locals, the decorative chains wrapped around the framework are a clear sign to stay the fuck away.

“Fucking Liberators,” Mako mutters under his breath, and closes the car door without climbing inside.

There’s two of them standing near their bikes, their hair cropped short and teeth bared in cruel grins. The pair of kids at their feet can’t be more than ten years old and their wide frightened eyes don’t know where to look—at the tanned faces of their aggressors, or at the chain insignia scrawled across the hems of their vests. They’re both equally terrifying.

“Shut the fuck up, we’ve been to his house,” the man snaps. “He wasn’t there, so you know what that means? Means we’re gonna rough up every single one of you till you tell us where that bitch is hiding. Little tykes like you—must see lots of things you shouldn’t, eh?”

“Fuck off,” one of the kids spits, and the man’s face contorts.

“Wanna say that again, you little cunt?”

Mako shouldn’t intervene. Doesn’t want to, he’s aching and hot and desperately wants to go home, but they’re only kids and he knows they won’t call for help. They’ve got no one to call for. He knows precisely who they are by the dirt on their faces and the ragged threads of their clothes, regardless of what their names might be. Damn them. Damn the lot of them. Damn everyone that walks by with eyes averted and damn his idiot conscience.

The man looks like he’s about to kick the kid in the gut when Mako looms up behind him.

“You’re extorting kids now?” he says darkly.

The two bikers wheel around at the sound of his voice and for a moment, their expressions mirror those of the kids. The shades and mask don’t hide his face, not from these two.

The woman recovers from the shock first. “Well,” she says with a gap-toothed smirk. “If it ain’t Roadhog.”

“No, no,” the man says, and he’s wearing his own oily grin. “Goes by Rutledge now. Ain’t that right?”

Mako snorts. “Olivia. Noah.”

The woman’s dark brows furrow as she scowls. “It’s Tazzy. He’s Roo. Get it right.”

He ignores her, waves a giant hand at the kids in the dirt like he’s trying to brush them away. His voice comes out more brusquely than he means it to. “Get out of here.”

They give him the same look they gave the Liberators—shaken but ready for a fight, the rascals—before scrambling to their feet and scurrying off like dingos through the sand. Not a word of thanks, but he never expected it anyway. He’s just glad to see the backs of them.

“Oi!” Tazzy caws after them. “We’re not finished with you! We’ll find you!”

“Let ‘em go, we know where they’re going.”

“Yeah but I don’t wanna chase kids all day, I’m fuckin’ hungry. Just wanna finish the job already.”

Something in Mako’s chest gives a nasty start. It shouldn’t, but it does.

“Did Jackhammer tell you to do this?” he says.

Tazzy narrows her eyes at him. “What’s it to you?”

“Did she?” he demands.

Her lip twitches before she caves under his shadow. “Look, she gave us a job to do and we’re doing it. Nothing wrong with that.”

“Plenty wrong with that. She’s sending you after kids now.”

“Not kids in particular,” Roo says. “Junkers. Got business in Junkertown, if you gotta know.”

Tazzy slaps his arm. “Oi, don’t tell him that.”

“He was gonna find out anyway, probably! Y’know, from all those inside sources he’s got, right?”

Mako doesn’t bother to set him straight. His thoughts are elsewhere.

“Junkers,” he mutters. “And I thought Jackhammer couldn’t sink any lower.”

“Hey, Jackhammer didn’t sink anywhere,” Tazzy snaps. “We’re on a mission, we’re out for justice. Gotta finally catch this Junker that’s been stealing from us.”

“Now who’s telling him things?”

“Shut up, Roo.”

Mako frowns. “You got Junkers stealing from you?”

“Just the one. One stupid prick with a head full of rocks. He doesn’t learn.”

“Bet nobody ever stole from us in your day, Roadhog,” Roo says wistfully. “Woulda killed ‘em, kids or not.”

“We’re losing clothes, food, bike parts,” Tazzy says, counting them off on calloused fingers. “Rubbish, even. The most random shit in the world, I swear. I heard Dingbat lost one of his shoes the other night.” A shadow passes over her face. “Just the one.”

_Good_ , Mako thinks, because it’s about time the Liberators started having a rough time of it.

“And you know what’s the worst part?” Tazzy says. “We catch him in the act almost every damn time! Find his stupid little tags all over the place when we don’t. And we’re pretty sure it’s our spray paint he’s muckin’ the place up with. This bitch.”

“The bugger’s fast,” Roo says. “Shouldn’t be after we chopped his fuckin’ leg off, but he is.”

_Don’t you idiots have bikes?_

“Hm,” Mako says.

“What we need,” Tazzy says, like she’s just had the most brilliant idea, “is a good old-fashioned enforcer.”

“No.”

“Oi, c’mon, I ain’t even asked yet!”

“And you’re not going to. Get out of here.”

“Fuck you, you ain’t in charge no more,” Roo says and jabs a finger in his direction, which is the first mistake of many that Mako’s sure he’s about to make.

“Go home,” Mako growls, dangerously. “Do what you want with the Junkers but leave the kids alone.”

“Aw, look at him,” Tazzy says. “How soft he’s gone.”

“You ain’t tellin’ me you never roughed up a few kiddies in your day? Look at the size of your hands, mate, you could crush two of their skulls at once. Bet you did. Bet you liked it.”

“Shut up, Roo, before you hurt the old man’s feelings.”

They both erupt into sudden laughter that turns heads, and Mako doesn’t care to think of how this must look. The solar farmer, chatting it up with two Liberator grunts. They can’t see his face, can’t see his scowl. Might assume he’s laughing along with them at some off-color joke.

He turns away, back toward his Jeep, and the laughter stops abruptly.

“Oi, we’re not done here—”

He feels a rough hand gather up a fistful of the back of his shirt. It sets his skin ablaze. Muscle memory acts before his mind can. Mako wheels around, grabs Roo by the forearm and bends until something pops.

“Yes,” he says, “we are.”

“Christ, okay!” Roo yelps. “Lemme go, you bastard!”

The instant Mako does, Roo leaps back, hand clamped down around the Mako-shaped bruises that are already forming. Mako weathers their scowls as they quickly mount their choppers, as the suddenly quiet town is filled with the sounds of rattling chains.

“Don’t start thinkin’ you got any special privileges,” Tazzy says. “You’re just like every other prick in this shit town.” Her voice is almost drowned out by the roar of her engine. “Jackhammer hasn’t forgotten about you.”

They kick off and ride away in unison, leaving him coughing and spluttering in a massive dust cloud. Now that they’re gone he finally lets himself relax a little, and it’s like a massive weight settles on his bones. The temptation to cradle his lower back is there—God, is it there—but the feeling of many eyes on him has him frozen. He’s not sure when so many people gathered to watch the altercation, but they’re sure here now. About a dozen of them, needing to get by but afraid to get too close even now that the Liberators are gone.

_Maybe it’s not the Liberators they’re afraid of._

Mako holds the mask tighter to his mouth as he lets out another dry cough. Head down, shoulders hunched, he returns to the Jeep. Doesn’t see the people in his way hurriedly part for him, but he feels it.

Into the Jeep, as quickly and quietly as possible, and he pretends the seat doesn’t scorch the pits of his knees when he sits. The gallon of milk is sweating condensation all over the floor mat, probably lukewarm by now. Still a long drive home but if it goes bad, it goes bad. He’ll drink it anyway. Just has to get out of here.

He turns the key in the ignition. The engine doesn’t utter a single sound. The pit in his stomach sinks like a stone and only grows heavier as he twists the key again and again.

At least one person is still watching him, he knows that much, because he feels the sudden urge to crawl down into the footwell and hide with the milk.

One last try. Nothing.

“Shit,” is the near unintelligible word that leaves his mouth, dry and cracked like the road. He tries to thump his forehead against the wheel but the plastic cover singes his skin and he jerks back with a start. More sweat snakes down his back.

Choice. He loves this town.

He doesn’t waste time feeling miserable about it—not sitting in the car, at least. He clambers back out onto tired feet and shoves his keys ( _useless_ ) into his shorts, gathers into his arms his bundle of groceries ( _slightly less useless, but only if I make it home alive_ ). The milk is wet with chilled condensation in the crook of his arm, so at least that’s something.

And so begins the walk home, in the middle of the day, with the sun beating down on his browned skin and an ache that reaches from his heels to the top of his spine.

Great.

 

* * *

 

By the time Mako finally reaches his house, he’s sure he’s died at least three times. Once, when one of his legs gave out and the bread sacrificed itself to cushion his fall. It’s not been a good walk. He likes this road better from the inside of a car.

As he stumbles up the beaten driveway on aching feet, he almost wishes his vast sea of solar arrays really was a lake. He wouldn’t mind an hour or two of nonchalant floating about at this point, crocodiles be damned.

A length of fence runs beside the gravel driveway, forming a sizable paddock. It’s the greenest thing around, an expanse of struggling grass spotted by patches of upturned soil. The two lopsided shacks within are weathering the sun valiantly, as usual. They’re nothing special, just a coop and miniature barn made out of whatever was available at the time. Corrugated metal, bits of scrapped car, strips of wire mesh to allow for airflow. Mismatched planks of wood make up the floor of the coop but if the chickens are angry with him for making their house one ugly motherfucker, they haven’t complained.

The smell of grass and blessed sounds of home from within the paddock ease Mako’s misery as he walks alongside it. A small gaggle of chickens is clucking away under the shade of the coop awning. Hybrid hens, the lot of them—golden brown and enraptured by their findings in the grass. Mako’s throat is as parched as the highway but that doesn’t stop him from clicking his tongue at them in greeting.

The noise inspires a great ruckus in the barn. He breaks out into his first smile of the day—a miserable crooked thing hidden by the dust mask—as three pigs come tumbling out to say hello. He sets the milk jug down in the dirt, tucks his bag from the supermarket under his arm, and reaches through the fence to stroke the curly black hair on Tahi’s head. He has to bend extra low to give tiny ginger Rua her hello, then back up to scratch Toru behind his white ears. They wiggle their upturned snouts at him and he snorts in return.

Unfortunately, the milk is several kilos heavier when he picks it up again and he’s dangerously close to taking a dirt nap face down in the gravel.

He trudges on toward his house. He thinks that it looks the way he feels, and not for the first time. He’s actually beginning to wonder if he should worry about how often he’s been thinking it these days.

The house is a real piece of shit, if he’s honest. He didn’t build it himself like he did the paddock but that doesn’t mean he never did it in with his personality and habits. Dust storms have done a real number on the walls, chipping their paint and turning them an ugly faded color. The steps that lead up to the porch creak dangerously under his weight and the weatherbeaten awning leans to the side, always threatening to flatten him someday. He sometimes wishes it would just get it over with. The screen door hangs off its last remaining hinge and greets him with a quiet whine as he sets down the beaten bag of groceries and reaches for his keys.

Almost there. He’s got a cold beer and a couch with his assprint on it waiting for him just on the other side of this door.

A loud crash from the solar field turns his head. The far side of the field is engulfed in a dust cloud and he stares, dumbfounded, while it clears out. He makes out a group of arrays knocked clean on their sides.

He hears a cough.

“Hey!” Mako thunders.

A figure suddenly perks up on the outskirts of the downed arrays. Mako sees a dirt-streaked face, a shock of blond hair. Eyes as orange as the sand stare at him through the dust.

Mako instinctively reaches over his shoulder for his shotgun but fuck, it’s not there because he’d left it in the house this morning, didn’t need the shotgun for a run to the supermarket. By the time he’s barreling down the steps and through the dirt, the intruder is already off, scampering and weaving through the arrays with unexpected speed. The last Mako sees of him is a glimpse of bulging pockets, of arms cradling bits of solar panel to his chest.

He’s long gone by the time Mako reaches the fallen arrays, heart pounding and lungs gasping. He pauses for breath and curses himself for it. Christ, he’s out of shape. Or maybe he’s just getting old. Maybe both? Both, he thinks miserably, and stiffly kneels down in the sand to assess the damage. At first glance, it looks like most of the arrays are all right, just got knocked down by that fucking piece of shit trespasser—

He closes his eyes and forces himself to take a long, deep breath.

Right. Anyway. The arrays are fine. Knocked over by a quick-footed rascal he’d really like to have a word with, but fine. Most of them are, at least.

Mako frowns as he picks up what’s left of the array in the center of all this mess. The cables have been torn from the ground, dug right out of the sand, and there’s an empty space between two frayed ends. The little asshole even took the stand that was keeping the panel propped up. That explains why everything fell over.

The stand and the cables… but not the solar panel itself. The panel he could understand. Some greedy bastard, tired of paying the ex-Liberator to keep his business up and running. Or a mother, down on her luck and jobless, with no means to pay him to keep power flowing to her home.

But the stand? The fucking _stand?_

“Why?” Mako says, to no one in particular, exasperated and exhausted and it’s too much, it’s just too much, he’s got to sit his ass down in this dirt right now or he’ll collapse. “Just… why?”

He’s frowning through his mask as he lets out a sigh, as he flips over the array in his hands just to see if anything’s salvageable. It is—it’s in shockingly good condition, actually, despite a few scuffs—but that’s not what he notices first. No—his eyes go straight to the garish splotch of paint, still fresh enough to stain his finger yellow when it brushes against it. It takes him a moment to work out what it’s supposed to be but when he does, his frown only deepens.

It’s the caricature of a bomb, flashing him the broadest, smuggest grin he’s ever seen.

“This bitch,” Mako murmurs in understanding, and he hates how Roadhog briefly rears his ugly head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EEYYY welcome to chapter one of my new fic!!! Been planning this bad boy out since late October and I'm finally ready to start putting it out. Hope you guys like it, it's gonna be a long one <3
> 
> octonart.tumblr.com


	2. Chapter 2

The next day, Mako rises when the sun does. His bedroom is more of a cave, perpetually dark and home to the odd spider, but what can he say? It’s force of habit.

He drags himself out of bed with a typical morning groan, allows himself to just sit there for a moment and cradle his back. He swears, this mattress could be a slab of plywood and he wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

When he switches on the bedside lamp, its yellow glow warms the walls and the threadbare quilt bunched up by his thigh. He was too exhausted to close the closet after changing into something more comfortable last night, and the light hits all the junk that’s stuffed in there too. A cardboard box coated in layers of dust, a couple of old books he decided he hated, his faded collection of clothes. Button ups, sweat-stained singlets, shorts, flannel. Lots of flannel. He’ll get to break those bad boys out now that winter’s coming.

And he hopes it’ll get here soon. His room’s stuffy as all hell—always is in the summer. Smells faintly of the dirty laundry he hid under his bed last week. He’d open the window if it wasn’t boarded up like the abandoned warehouse in town. Alas.

He stands, wiggles his toes on the little pink rug that’s been flattened over time, and oh, that was too fast, too soon. Here comes the head rush.

He’s not an old man, not by any means. Forty-eight isn’t exactly young anymore but it’s not like he’s got a foot in the grave yet. Maybe this is all just punishment for what he’s done—divine revenge for everyone Roadhog ever maimed. He doesn’t believe in ghosts but honestly, it wouldn’t surprise him if he’s got a caravan of angry translucent bastards trailing behind him at all times, prodding his bones and making him ache. And if he doesn’t—well—he’s pretty sure he should. Pretty sure he deserves it.

What a bunch of pleasant thoughts to start the day with, eh?

He does his best to avoid looking in the mirror above the sink as he shambles around the bathroom like a zombie. Brushes his teeth—has to arm wrestle the toothpaste to get anything out of the damn tube—peels off boxers that are damp with cold sweat, steps into the shower. There are three knobs: He twists the middle to redirect water from the tap to the showerhead, twists the left for hot and the right for cold. He huffs out a slow sigh as lukewarm water cascades down his back, in little rivulets beneath dark chest hair, and across the massive tattoo that marks the expanse of his stomach.

Like his reflection, he’d rather not see it.

But rarely does life afford him such luxuries. He’s tying his hair up with an elastic band when he meets his own eyes in the mirror. Deep brown like the mud in the paddock, hidden under the shadow of his heavy brow. A broad nose, a wide jaw, and thick lips he hasn’t seen smile in ages.

And scars. Aged and discolored things from the Omnic Crisis and beyond, nasty jagged lines that don’t just reside on his face, oh no. The dust masks he wears don’t cover up much, but even if he didn’t wear them to keep from inhaling the fucking dirt he’s not sure he’d be able to quit them. Doesn’t like how vulnerable he feels when people can see his face. He supposes he got used to the security a real mask provides back in his Liberator days.

But it doesn’t matter. Not the masks, not the sunglasses, not the scars on his face. They’re not what people notice first, not what they stare at when they can’t meet his eyes.

That old numbness washes over him as he stares at the splotch of marred skin at the base of his neck, the one that crawls up the left half of his jaw like pocked tendrils and stops just short of his eye. That’s the one they remember him for. That’s the one he wishes he could forget.

It was a grenade. One of their own, snatched away by the sheriff and his boys and used against them in an attempt to round them up like cattle. Needless to say, Mako and the Liberators are still here. Things didn’t go so well for old Sheriff Wallace. Beaten to death by a masked man in a blind rage. Mako doesn’t think he’ll ever forget the screams.

_That grenade was meant for you._

Mako’s hand drifts from his damp hair down to his gut and the drops of water still sliding down it. His fingers glide across ink that’s starting to fade—flames and the face of a pig, exhaust pipes and an engine. The words Wild Hog Power entwined in chains. Roadhog. A sign as clear as the scar on his face, as the chains on the Liberators’ bikes.

Stay away. Stay far away.

He throws on some clothes without much thought. Loose shorts and an old singlet, shades and a wide-brimmed hat to block out the sun. First thing’s first, though. As much as he doesn’t want to do it, he supposes he has to eat.

Mako trudges into the heart of the house, past the patchy couch that looks like it lost a few fights with his ass. The morning light really shows off all the dust on the shitty old TV nearby (though honestly it must not be as shitty as he thinks if it still works).

Linoleum planks turn to linoleum tiles under his feet and he’s in the kitchen. Boy, he wishes he wasn’t. Likes it much better from the couch where he can’t see the sink and its mountain of wretched dishes. He’s getting around to washing them, he swears. Sometime this year, perhaps.

To think he was excited about having his own kitchen once. Seems like a lot longer than four years ago. He went and bought all the utensils he needed to make this a chef’s kitchen, too—knives and shit a lot nicer than the can opener he picked up yesterday. These days, if they’re not in the sink they’re lying under a blanket of dust in the forgotten depths of some cabinet. No time for cooking. No energy. No reason to bother. The most lively thing that this miserable place ever sees anymore is the plastic solar-powered toy that sits in the window. It’s a grinning monkey, swinging endlessly from a disembodied branch… but that poor little guy is just as dust-ridden as everything else.

Mako sighs at the monkey but it just keeps grinning. The absolute bastard. What’s it got to smile about that Mako doesn’t? It’s a cheap piece of plastic, for fuck’s sake.

He refuses to look the bastard monkey in the eyes as he shuffles over to the sink. It could smell better, that’s for sure. He grabs a few things from the top of Smells Like Shit Mountain and washes them in silence. Rinses them in cold water, more like. The only dishes he truly washes these days are cutlery, his favorite novelty mug, and the rare plate. He gets by by eating most things on paper plates and napkins, honestly. It’s just easier. It’ll put a hole in his wallet in the long run but fuck, if being tired ain’t expensive.

It’s another uneventful breakfast. He puts together some scrambled eggs over a slice of hot toast and sits at the table, watching through faded yellow curtains as the sun finally makes it over the mulga shrubs outside. He eats in silence, lets all the morning birds chirping outside do the talking for him. They’ve got more to say than he does anyway.

Light filters in through every curtain, warming even his toes under the table. He drinks his coffee from a mug that declares “MOTORCYCLES,” and below that “helping ugly people have sex since 1903.” Eats bits of egg off a paper plate with bright pink hearts on it. Even he wasn’t able to refuse the 75% off stickers. Sue him.

When he’s done he tosses everything into the sink and heads out to the porch.

“Christ,” he utters, because goddamn, is it bright. Once his eyes adjust, he gives the horizon a quick scan just like he does every morning. No real reason to anymore, he keeps trying to tell himself. It’s been four years. No one ever comes out here and if they do, he’ll know. They come by vehicle, he’ll hear them. They come by foot, he’ll see them.

Hard to break the habit, though, even though his house is a only minuscule dot in these vast shrublands, his existence a meaningless blip of life in the Northern Territory. Just a few minutes drive off Stuart Highway, down a road until asphalt turns to gravel and gravel to dirt—not hard to find, but no one visits unless they need to.

And rarely does anyone need to. And if they need to, they start making excuses to stay away. He’s surrounded by nothing on all sides, just cracked shrubs and dry grass sprouting from red dirt. The electrical poles rise higher than any tree and the sky above is an endless blue, cloudless in the morning heat. According to the dusty old thermometer nailed outside the front door, it’s going to be a scorcher. Twenty-three degrees this early in the morning? Fucking hell. Summer’s not going out without a bang, it seems.

Mako unlocks the gate and lets himself into the paddock. He feels that old urge to kick off his Wellingtons and pad around in the grass for a bit but the threat of midday heat keeps him on a beeline toward the pig barn. He knows Tahi is waiting patiently for him on the other side of the door. He cracks a little smile at that. She always knows he’s coming by the jingling of his keys.

True to form, Tahi comes waddling out into the grass once Mako unlocks the door. Her dark eyes scan the grass for anything tasty, just in case, before she turns to say good morning to him. She comes right up to his feet to nudge her upturned nose against his knee. Sweet as ever, she is.

He squats down to her level, looks her right in the eyes.

“How you goin’?”

She offers him a soft little snort in response, twitches her floppy ears.

“Glad to hear it.”

He plants a kiss on her nose before she takes off through the grass, her narrow tail going wild. She knows what’s coming next and her excited squealing wakes the other two. They come barreling out of the barn, shoulder to shoulder like quarreling twins, and Mako steps quickly out of their way to save his toes from being trampled by eager hooves.

“Easy,” he warns, but he’s smiling as he returns to the house to grab the coil of old weathered hose.

He stays there with Tahi, Rua, and Toru for a while, dangling the hose over the fence while they roll around in the fresh wallow. They splash mud across his legs a few times but it’s no bother. He’s joined them in the mud on more than one occasion, usually on the hottest days of the year. Might join them later today if he feels up to it. They’d love it, he’s sure.

Eventually, he shuts off the hose and leaves the pigs to enjoy their wallow while he looks over the rest of the paddock. He checks the corner they’ve made their toilet ( _needs cleaning soon_ ) and briefly pokes his head into the barn. It’s a ramshackle thing, dark inside and carefully ventilated. Fresh straw covers the floor in piles akin to little beds. He’s pleased to feel cooler air wash over him as he steps inside for a moment, thinks not for the first time that it might make a decent place to curl up and nap if his bed ever happens to go up in flames.

He makes a note to feed the pigs later before moving on to the chickens. The moment he unlocks the hen house, all the chickens come scrambling out into the grass, flitting between his feet like they’re eager to get stepped on. He almost loses his balance trying to make sure they don’t, the cute little pricks.

He barely fits in the coop himself—has to stoop pretty low, which was an oversight on his part when he built the damn thing—so he doesn’t take his time shifting the litter around. He musses up the straw with his hands, relieved to see it’s clean enough that he doesn’t have to replace it yet.

His morning rituals done, Mako ducks back out of the coop, runs the back of his hand across his forehead to get the sweat off. He can’t believe he’s sore already. Can’t believe a quick trip into the coop has him panting and dying for a sit-down. It’s kind of pathetic but at least there’s no one around to see it.

On any normal day this would be the time to grab a cold drink from the refrigerator and sit on the porch for a few minutes, but this isn’t any normal day. The trespasser from last night made sure of that.

A wave of despair washes over Mako as he finally acknowledges the field of solar arrays. Yep, there it is. Didn’t mysteriously vanish in the night like he hoped it would. The panels are all there, their faces like a blue tarp across the sand… except there. Right there on the edge of the field where a creature with dirt for a face and wide staring eyes had risen out of the sand and toppled everything over.

Mako can’t help but groan. He shouldn’t have left the spray paint to dry overnight. Shouldn’t have left it to bake in the sun.

“Life is pain,” he explains to the chicken pecking at his boot, and heads back to the house.

 

* * *

 

This isn’t going to work and he knows it.

When Tahi and Rua were just piglets—little oinking things that he could hold in one hand—he bought them a steel tub to eat from. They grew up and gained a brother in Toru, and Mako has since upgraded their trough several times over, but he still has the original. It’s nothing special, just a dim old thing with handles on either side, kept in case he ever needed it again.

The tub’s in his arms now, filled to the brim with hot soapy water. He knows this isn’t going to work, but he figures he hasn’t got anything better to do.

He slops water all over the linoleum on his trip from the kitchen sink to the front door, promises himself he’ll mop it up later. He has to balance the tub on one knee and hold it still with one hand while he reaches for the door with the other. He’s quite satisfied with his balancing act, wonders if maybe he would have had a better future in the circus rather than the Liberation Front.

He muscles the door open and nearly gets a stomach-full of knuckles for his trouble.

“Rutledge!” the woman at the door cries. The speed with which her hand goes flying for the pistol holstered at her hip nearly flings the hat right off her head. The surprise Mako feels in his chest is mirrored on her face—which isn’t really fair, if you ask him. Why the hell is she surprised? She’s the one who showed up unannounced on his doorstep.

“Harris,” he says—pleasantly enough, considering.

She eyes his tub with suspicion as her hackles come back down. Unbeknownst to her, it’s only getting heavier in Mako’s arms while she just stands there. He shifts his weight around, squints even behind sunglasses when the badge pinned to her front catches the sun. He wishes desperately that he’d had the foresight to slip on a dust mask but it turns out his tap is louder than any old car.

“This a bad time?” she finally says, but Mako gets the feeling she doesn’t really care.

“You need something?”

“Just a quick word.”

Really quick, apparently, since she gets right to it.

“I heard about what happened yesterday,” she says.

Mako frowns. He instinctively glances toward the fallen arrays in the distance, remembers a gaunt face in the dust, and wonders how the hell she could have heard about that already.

“How?” he says. Doesn’t really like the way her eyes narrow but hey, he has to ask.

“Half the damn town was there, I’m sure you saw.”

Mako stares at her in confusion but the sunglasses mask the only part of his face that doesn’t just look unreasonably surly. And there she goes like she always does, tensing up like a coil of wire under his gaze. Glaring up at him like he said something offensive, like he isn’t hefting a whole bucket full of lavender-scented bubbles.

“Got some people worried,” she says, “and I don’t blame them. It’s worrying, seeing you out and about, chatting with a couple of Libs.”

 _Well, what do you know,_ Mako thinks flatly. _Water’s getting cold._

He shoulders past her, careful to slosh a bit of soapy water on her boots as he goes by. Not that he thinks she’ll give a shit. Good old Harris, hot on his heels as he thuds down the creaky porch steps. She’s going to follow him all the way to the solar field, isn’t she.

“Seven calls,” Harris says to the back of his head. “That’s seven people upset enough to phone me up trying to get me to do something about it.” He feels her gaze go stony, hears her voice get sharper. “Do I need to do something about it, Rutledge?”

“Nothing happened,” he mutters. “I told them to fuck off. They did.”

“Took their time.”

“Not my fault.”

“Yeah?” she says as they reach the field. He twists around to fit himself and the tub of water between the first two arrays and she doesn’t wait to sidle in after him. “Got one bloke telling me the three of you were laughing. Trading jokes.”

“He lied,” Mako says through gritted teeth.

“Someone certainly did,” she says. “It’s about time to check up on you anyway, see how you’re doing.”

He quite hates the way she says it, with that ever-present edge of suspicion to her voice. There’s a moment of blessed silence as she trots through the dust he leaves in his wake and he wonders miserably what she’ll say next.

“How are you doing, Rutledge?”

“Peachy,” he grunts. Her gaze feels like dozens of spiders crawling across his back and he feels that age-old need to crawl under a rock. He really wishes he’d brought a dust mask with him. Or a paper bag to pull over his head. Either-or.

“Pigs doin’ okay?” she says. “The chooks?”

“Yeah.”

“And how’s the bike?”

His hands tremble. From the weight of the tub, he swears.

“Does it matter?”

“Yes,” she says firmly.

He heaves the tub up with a labored grunt as they carry on through the solar field. The weight of it, the sun beating down on him—his palms are so slick with sweat he’s surprised he hasn’t dropped the damn thing on his damn toes by now.

When he doesn’t say anything, Harris presses on. “It does matter,” she says. “People see you on that thing again, they’ll be scared shitless. And that’s exactly what I can’t have, Rutledge, not anymore.”

“Told you, I’m not gonna ride it.”

“And I told you, I don’t believe that. Ride it or not, I don’t like that you still have it. You kept it. It means something to you, even now. And that’s why I’ll never believe you when you tell me you’ve changed.”

He can’t bring himself to look back at her, or say anything in response.

When they arrive at the downed arrays, Mako sets the tub in the dirt and gets down on his knees. It takes him a hot second—has to kind of ease himself down at a stupid-looking angle while holding onto one of the panels for support—and he hates how he can feel Harris just soaking it all in. She probably loves it. Her fingers are probably dancing across her holster with glee.

He finds the water to be disappointingly lukewarm when he plunges an old rag into the suds. Unlike Harris’s critical gaze, which is white-hot as she watches him start to scrub at the vandalized solar panel.

“The hell are you doing, anyway?” she says.

“Cleaning.”

“Smart arse.”

He rolls his eyes at the grinning paint. “Caught some guy messing around out here yesterday,” he says. “Took this panel out of commission. Left me a little gift.” He looks pointedly up at her. “I’m cleaning it.”

Harris considers that for a moment. “He take anything?”

 _Oh,_ now _she wants to do her job._

“Yeah. Why?”

“Let me see what you’re scrubbin’ there.”

Mako pulls the rag away to reveal the drawing of the smiling bomb, bright yellow and quite unbothered by the soap and water. He’s tempted to just smash it with his fist like the pest it is. That’d get rid of it. Unfortunately, it would also get rid of his solar panel. He supposes punching can’t solve everything.

Meanwhile, Harris is frowning down at the caricature, teeth gnawing away at her bottom lip. She mutters something he’s not supposed to hear, but the solar field’s a quiet place.

“Thought so.”

He shouldn’t ask, but he’s still kind of pissed at this guy for wrecking his field.

“Thought what?” he says.

“It’s the same guy. He’s been causing trouble in town, too. Leaves these drawings.”

Mako decides against telling her that he’s been after the Liberators as well. If she doesn’t already know, she’ll find out. Doesn’t need to be from him. He just wets the rag again and gives scrubbing another try.

She’s scrutinizing him again. God, he wishes she’d stop.

“You get a look at him?” she asks.

“No.”

A quiet scoff. “Shame.”

A moment of silence, broken only by quiet wheezing and feverish scrubbing.

“I put out a reward for him.”

He doesn’t know how he feels about that. Why is she telling him this? No—he doesn’t want to know. He doesn’t say anything.

“It’d be enough to fix this mess.”

“I’m not a bounty hunter.”

“You could be. Could do some good with those hands and prove to everyone you’re different now. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

The paint’s not coming off. He keeps scrubbing until the cracks in his dry fingers fill up with soap and burn, burn, burn.

“You could really help the town here,” she says impatiently.

“Not a bounty hunter,” he mutters, and he can practically hear the scowl sizzling on her face.

“I don’t get you. You say you want to change, you say you’re different now, but what’s so different about you, huh? All you did was up and leave. You wanna be good, then do something good! Help someone out, have some compassion for someone other than yourself.”

He tried that once. He tried it and got his whole family killed while he wasn’t around to save them.

Some kind of pathetic look must have crossed his face because Harris suddenly gets a whole lot angrier. “Don’t you sulk at me,” she says. “You’re not the victim in all this.”

“Never said I was.”

“Sure. But then, you never say much of anything, do you? You like to talk with your actions. Out here, all alone. You think this is some kind of atonement?”

“No—”

“You think your fucking solar panels make up for anything?”

She’s coming undone at the seams, quivering like she might explode. She looks feverishly down at the stand of a nearby solar panel like she’s desperate to kick it over, and it’s enough to get him on his feet.

“Sheriff,” he says roughly.

She stops so abruptly that for a moment, it’s like she’s caught in time. Eyes wide, face under the white glow of the sun, she actually looks her age for once. Young and lost, furious and angry. Strands of hair escaping the tight tie of her ponytail.

The moment passes in an instant. She straightens up, fixes her crooked hat. The brim casts dark shadows under her eyes once more.

“Told you,” she says. “It’s just Harris. Sheriff was my dad.”

“Thought you were the sheriff now.”

She comes right up to him, brimming with darkness like a quiet stormcloud. Looks at him like she’s daring him to hurt her, and he recognizes that look. He gets it from the mirror all the time.

“Fuck you,” she says.

“Will do,” he says.

She leaves without another word, and he’s glad to see the back of her sweaty button-up. He waits until he hears the engine of her car rev up, hears tires tread through dirt, before he runs the back of his hand over his forehead and gives up on the paint. He gives up on not feeling like a miserable sack of human shit too, while he’s at it.

He eats lunch in the paddock with the pigs and chickens, sits in the shade of the barn and kicks off his Wellingtons. The cool grass tickles the arches of his feet—though sometimes he looks down to find it’s actually a chicken searching his toes for snacks. He slaps the occasional fly away with a flap of his hat, offers bits of his celery when the pigs stare at him with shining eyes and snuffling noses. There’s a bit of stray mud seeping through the seat of his shorts, the smell of grass and straw in the air.

It’s only a brief moment of respite from the ache in his feet and the constant sheen of sweat that coats him, but it’s enough.

Mako isn’t a bounty hunter. He never was one and he doesn’t intend to become one now, but… Harris had a point. Catching the thief would net him enough money to fix his broken array. It also might do some sad, sorry local businesses some kind of favor. He wanted to tell her he’d think about it before she left, but things never do work out in his favor.

So, he’ll put in his bit of effort to gain some quick cash and if it works out, it works out. He gets the feeling that said cash is due to wander in any time now because the way he sees it, Mako interrupted the thief last night. Startled him mid heist and didn’t let him finish the job.

He’ll be back, and Mako will be ready.

 

* * *

 

The sun’s just about to kiss the horizon by the time Mako steps back to wipe the sweat from his face and admire his handiwork.

Not that there’s much to admire, but it’s something.

Roadhog wasn’t opposed to killing people when they needed to be put down. He killed cops, bystanders, omnics, rival gang members—just about anyone who looked at the Liberators sideways. Asphyxiation, road rage, blunt force. Roadhog did it all, and Mako remembers.

But Mako won’t kill an animal, not if he can help it. People seem to think that’s funny for some reason. Four years ago, the backyard farmer he bought his first chickens from threw a couple of leg-hold traps into the deal. “To stop the dingoes getting to ‘em,” he explained in his infinite wisdom. When Mako refused them, the guy just laughed and tossed the traps into the back of his Jeep.

Yeah, he still has them. Can’t say he hasn’t been tempted to set them out on his more paranoid nights, and not to catch any dingoes. Four years they’ve been gathering dust in his garage. Well, tonight’s their night to shine.

Mako can barely see the traps anymore as he gazes out across the solar field. Their toothless clamps, crescent like the pale moon, peek out of the sand and reflect the orange glow of the sunset.

He’s sure to give them a wide berth, just in case, as he makes his way to the outskirts of the field where the panels are casting dark blue shadows across the dirt. He crouches down on aching feet, tries to quiet his heavy breathing. His eyes are focused, his hands clamped around his trusty old shotgun.

He feels silly now that he’s out here but he’s out of excuses. Already locked up the animals for the night, had a quick dinner. It’s either drag himself off to bed like a crotchety old loser or catch this motherfucker who thinks he can fuck with Mako twice and get away with it.

Now that he thinks about it, that settles it. To hell with the reward money. If this guy comes back a second time, it’s personal.

So he stays, crouched in the shadows like a predator lying in wait. A predator with a shotgun. He might have laughed if he wasn’t trying to keep quiet.

The sun dips lower and the orange sunset fades into a blue that washes over the desert.

The air turns cold in the absence of the sun. A breeze chills the drying sweat on the back of his neck.

Christ, his feet hurt.

Fuck, he’s tired.

But he waits.

 

 

 

 

 

Something rings out like a shot and Mako jerks awake. He scrambles for his shotgun, quickly scrubs away the spot of drool on his chin. The moon is high in the sky but it illuminates shit all. He sees the dark outline of the solar field against the sky, hears the breeze that makes him shiver as it rustles through the shrubbery.

A pained cry cuts through the midnight silence.

Mako’s on his feet in an instant, ignoring the protest of his knees and the rush in his head as he plunges into the solar field. He weaves through the arrays as quickly as his tired body will let him. The panels are too tall, can’t see over them, but he’s sure it was the western trap that went off. Not a dingo. He’d know a human scream anywhere.

Cold air chills the sweat on his face as he runs, Wellingtons plodding through dirt and flattening tufts of grass. If the guy’s still screaming, Mako can’t hear him over the sound of his own labored breathing. The dry air makes his throat burn, makes him cough.

He slows to a stop, heart pounding to the beat of his thudding footsteps. He stares down at the trap, his ponytail coming undone in wisps around his face, and the desert doesn’t dare to make a single sound. It’s perfectly silent save for the rasping pants of a man too old for this bullshit.

The trap sits motionless and smug in the sand, and clamped in its jaws is its unsuspecting victim—a stupid fucking rock with a yellow fucking grin spray painted across its face.

“Motherfucker,” Mako says.

There’s a piece of scrap paper pinned underneath the trap, wrinkled and streaked with dirt. Going against the protest his brain and back give him in unison, he bends down to pick it up. The scratchy, lopsided scrawl that runs across it makes his blood run as cold as the sweat on his neck.

> _YOU LEFT YOUR DOOR UNLOCKED MATE_

Mako stares down at the face winking at him from the bottom of the page.

His blood begins to boil.

His ears go redder than the sand.

He breaks out in a furious sprint toward the house. His shoulders knock against solar panels he can’t be bothered to avoid. His footsteps sound like the thudding of a homicidal giant.

He bursts out into the open, heaving like a winded bear, shotgun gripped in two hands. His home sits like a lighthouse in the desert, warm light spilling through curtained windows. Just how he left it…

Except the front door is wide open.

From the corner of his eye, Mako catches a glimpse of a shadow in motion as it sprints in front of a window, its boots kicking up dirt and bits of grass behind it. Lanky and knobbly—a goblin of a person making off in an odd uneven gait with something pinned under one arm. He’s too far already, too fast. Mako has half a mind to just throw the damn shotgun at him.

“CUNT,” Mako bellows after him.

What he doesn’t expect is a high-pitched voice in the night, a delighted cackle and a distant cry of, “Old codger!”

That’s it. If this guy comes back, he’s dead.

Mako doesn’t stick around to watch the thief prance off into the night. He drags himself up the porch steps, feeling an odd kinship with them when they groan under his weight. Into the house, shotgun into its case. He’s tired, angry, defeated, but this trial isn’t over.

Mako scours the house. He opens every cabinet, checks every surface, peers into every closet. His laptop is still snoozing on the kitchen table, keys still hanging from the peg by the door. The secret stash of emergency money he keeps under his pillow looks like it hasn’t been disturbed in a century. Nothing missing from the closet in his bedroom, and—thank fuck. He sighs with relief when he confirms the cardboard box hidden behind his clothes hasn’t been tampered with.

Eventually, he has no choice but to shamble back into the kitchen and collapse at the table. When he leans back the hard wooden edges of the chair bite into his skin, but it’s so preferable to standing he hardly notices. Lifts a hand to his face, heaves out a sigh.

His eyes follow the trail of dirt he tracked all throughout the house. It starts at the door, shoots into the kitchen and winds around into the hallway. Pokes into the bathroom, disappears into the bedroom. Loops back on itself and eventually meets him at the table. His tired gaze finds the laptop, jumps across to the counter and its sink full of unwashed dishes. Across the weathered coffeemaker and up the refrigerator to the single box of Coco Pops perched atop it.

Just the one.

Mako blinks. His tired face is unchanging.

Oh.

So that’s how it is.

Mako hopes the thief comes back, he sincerely does.

He’s going to kill him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the wait! first it was the holidays, then my birthday, then i got sick, and of course i always have to deal with the Depression™ but here's hoping the next chapter will be done sooner. as always, thanks for reading! <3
> 
> octonart.tumblr.com


	3. Chapter 3

Not having the Jeep is both a curse and a blessing, if you ask Mako. It means he’s stranded out here for approximately—well—forever, but it also gives him the whole damn day to plot his revenge. And boy, does he have some plotting to do.

He considers his options over coffee and the usual swiftly cooked eggs. He fires up the old laptop and takes a peek at his bank account just like he always does, even though money is the last thing on his mind right now. When he ventures outside to feed the pigs and chickens he can’t escape the memory of a toothy grin in the night. He’s so distracted that he ends up treading on an unsuspecting hen, and it takes more than one hasty apology to get her to look at him again.

Once everyone’s finally fed, he finds himself on the porch, surveying the horizon. Arms folded across the weathered banister, soaking up splinters. For a moment, he just thinks. The morning sun hits him in just the right way, warming him from the inside out. Warms the whole damn farm, too. From the solar field to the paddock, from the dirt driveway to the shrub-lined road that leads to the highway. He loves it when the place glows like this. It’s a shame he’s going to have to kill someone here.

Okay, so he’s not actually going to kill the guy. Harris probably doesn’t want him trying to cash in a corpse, and he’s supposed to be a new man now anyway. Not to say the temptation hasn’t been there, but it’s been four years since he killed anyone. Maybe three and a half. He’s been doing good, okay?

So good, in fact, that he even manages to come up with a completely nonlethal way to trap the thief. If it works, anyway. He’ll admit, there’s a chance it won’t. Nonlethal traps never were his forte.

The leg-hold trap he lays at the foot of the front door shines under the glare of the porch light. The contrast is as stark as it gets; dark metal against the pale wood of a battered porch. With night approaching, the porch light functions as the trap’s own personal spotlight. Only a blind man could miss it.

It’s perfect.

Mako locks up the pigs early tonight, lies in wait under the shadow of the barn where the cool grass tickles his shins. He can hear Rua and Toru shuffling around inside, can hear the clucking of chickens from inside the coop. A pardalote in a tree somewhere whistles a lullaby for the setting sun.

He’ll be honest, he’s not sure if this stink is coming from him or inside the barn. Smells like sweat and apprehension. Maybe he shouldn’t have skipped showering this morning. Probably shouldn’t have skipped dinner either since his stomach is about ready to start whinging. He shuts it up with a downward glare, adjusts the dust mask that covers his mouth.

The motion-sensing lamp above the front door flicks on suddenly, bathing the porch in white light. Mako’s poor eyes have already adjusted to the darkness and it makes them burn, but he doesn’t look away. He doesn’t dare to, because someone is sauntering toward his house without a care in the world.

He gets his first good look at the thief as he walks into the light. Christ, the bastard’s tall, isn’t he? Not as tall as Mako, of course, but he’s up there. Hard to notice at first due to his horrible posture. Hey, maybe he wouldn’t have to slouch like that if he wasn’t hefting a bulging duffel bag across his back. Just a thought.

The thief’s gait is crooked but jaunty as he approaches the porch. He casts a single cautionary glance over his shoulder at its foot. Thin blond hair in all directions, a nose that could take someone’s eye out. The bush is in his eyes—not to mention all over his clothes. He’s filthy, decked out in scavenged clothes and bits of junk. Definitely a Junker, which almost makes Mako feel some kind of guilt over having to whack the guy. But then he thinks of his poor solar panels, his stolen cereal, and he doesn’t feel so bad anymore.

The steps creak as the thief ambles up them but they’re not louder than the tune he’s humming. What is that—classical? He’s making a real show of it, swaying along like he’s alone in his own house and not about to break into Mako’s. The bastard.

The thief’s eyes suddenly lock on to the trap at his feet. Mako hears a quiet snicker, watches as the duffel bag gets gutted by eagerly trembling hands. Out comes a mangled tin in one hand, a can of spray paint in the other. The thief’s bony cheeks widen in a grin.

Mako takes off, prowling through the darkness like he’s back in the Liberation Front. The muscle memory is there but give him a break, he never did a single one of those jobs in Wellingtons. They’re unwieldy on his feet and make him feel clumsy as he pads up the driveway but, thank fuck, the thief is utterly absorbed in his work. He doesn’t hear the crunch of stray gravel under Mako’s feet as he creeps closer, doesn’t hear when Mako treads on a twig and freezes like a deer caught in headlights. He just stands there, humming his happy little tune while he paints a grinning bomb across the tin. This guy’s hearing must be absolutely useless.

Mako puts his foot on the first step.

The old wood positively _shrieks_.

The thief wheels around, eyes wide and brows raised. Mako expects fear, surprise, shame. Anything.

But the guy grins impossibly wide, as brightly as a spotlight, and Mako is momentarily blinded.

With nowhere else to go, the thief bounds right over the trap and into the dark house. Mako spits out a real cunt of a swear—mostly at himself for being such a cocky prick that he didn’t think to lock the front fucking door—and hauls himself up the steps.

Inside, the thief bolts for the window above the sink like he intends to jump through it. Bit of a lofty goal since he’d half to crash through a pile of unwashed dishes as well as the glass, but Mako doesn’t let him get that far anyway. He’s hot on his heels, outstretched fingers so damn close to the back of his shirt.

And then the thief vaults right over the table, separating them. Mako thinks the maneuver is surprisingly graceful—at least until a filthy boot sweeps his laptop to the floor with a crash that makes him cringe.

They find themselves at a standstill. Can’t go left, can’t go right—of course, Mako could simply reach across, grab the back of his head, and slam his skull into the table, but that wouldn’t be very nice. His table deserves better than that.

The air is tense as they eye each other up, Mako’s knuckles going pale around the backboard of a chair, the thief looking around like he’s on holiday at the museum.

“Lovely place you got here,” he says with a flash of his canine teeth, and Mako glowers at him.

“You’re dead.”

“Not yet.”

The thief suddenly bounds off into the living room. He leaps over the couch, upsets the old TV on his way. Down the narrow hallway and into the open door at its end. Sweet freedom, right? Mako’s much too busy panting to chuckle but he does grin. Just a little.

_Gotcha_.

He stands in the doorway for a moment, watching with that same grin as the thief scrabbles at the window like a rat trying to escape a box. Long, dirt-stained fingers pry uselessly at the wooden boards layered over the glass, even try to dig out the nails pinning them to the wall. He jumps onto the bed to get a different angle on them, stomps all over Mako’s pillow with dirty feet, but the boards are stubborn by design.

The thief realizes it too late.

Mako curls a meaty forearm against the thief’s throat, feels it work when it chokes out a yelp. He snatches both wrists in one hand and pins them behind the guy’s bony waist, right up against his own protruding gut, and… feels the unexpected texture of metal under his fingertips.

Mako looks down with a frown. Well, he can’t say he expected the guy to have prosthetics. Two of them, an arm and a leg. And where the hell did a Junker get something like that?

“Please,” the thief cries. His throat bobs against Mako’s arm. Wisps of his hair tickle Mako’s chin. He smells like shit, frankly, and feels like a bag of bones in his grip.

“I didn’t mean nothing by it!” he insists, and his voice goes all weepy, all small, and it doesn’t match his ugly elongated face in the slightest. “Got two little sisters back home—just four and eight years—I’m all they’ve got. Swear it—swear it on me life, I just wanted to get ‘em something to eat! Please, just don’t hurt me!”

Mako’s grateful the thief can’t see him frown. That does explain the Coco Pops… But what about the fallen solar panels? What about the—?

Jagged teeth bite down into the meat of his arm. Mako hisses in pain—falters before he can retaliate because the guy starts to thrash like a fucking crocodile. Surprise or no surprise, Mako barely loosens his grip.

But it’s enough for the wiry piece of shit to wriggle his way free.

Mako hears him clonking down the hall—boot then metal, foot then prosthetic. He bolts after him just in time to receive the horribly smug little titter that’s aimed his way.

“Big dumb cunt you are, eh?” the thief says with a grin over his shoulder. “Thought you could catch Jamison Fawkes?”

He positively cackles as he prances toward the front door, eyes all over Mako like he doesn’t want to miss one second of this delicious victory.

Which means he’s not paying a lick of attention to where he’s actually going.

The leg-hold trap chomps down on the metal shaft of his prosthetic leg. He jerks to a stop, brows knit together like a great woolly carpet over his eyes, and looks down at the trap like it’s a fresh pile of dung he’s just stepped in.

Mako barrels into him like a runaway train. They crash to the floor like a sack of bricks and the porch knocks the wind out of both of them.

“Shit,” Jamison gasps. “Christ, you heifer, get off me, I can’t breathe!”

_Ah_ , Mako thinks wearily. _The soothing sounds of real pleading._

“I’m gonna die—you’re gonna flatten me, you’re gonna kill me, I’m gonna die—”

“Maybe that’s the point,” Mako wheezes into his ear.

“Psycho,” Jamison spits. “Lunatic! What kinda crazy boards up his bedroom window, huh? What’re you hiding in there? Is it corpses? Huh? You some kinda crazy psycho killer? I oughta report you—”

“To who?” Mako says. “The sheriff? Same sheriff who put a bounty on your head yesterday?”

That makes Jamison clamp his mouth shut, but he’s hardly given up. Mako can still hear each indignant huff as he squirms beneath him.

“I hear it’s a lot,” Mako says. “Enough to fix what you broke, replace what you stole.” A shadow passes over his face. “And now I know your name.”

“Ain’t afraid of no cops.”

“The Liberators are looking for you, too. Maybe they’ll pay me more.”

The change is instant. Jamison stops squirming, goes stiff like an old corpse beneath him.

“You wouldn’t,” he utters.

No, Mako wouldn’t.

“I might, if it keeps you off my property.”

“N-no, you can’t! For money, you’d—you’d just sell a bloke out like that? You—” He gasps for air, possibly on the verge of hyperventilating, and now Mako actually does feel a bit bad. “You can’t, I’ll do anything you want.”

“Nothing you got that I want.”

“I can get you anything though! I’ll steal you a new car, you like cars? Watches? Jewelry? Guns—you need guns? Can probably get you one of them if you want.”

“All I want,” Mako says, “is my array up and running.”

“I’ll fix it for you! Fuck it, I’ll make you a new one—as many as you want! Go on, name your price, let’s make a deal. A gentleman’s agreement. C’mon, you can trust me.”

“Really?” Mako says with narrowed eyes. “‘Cause I don’t feel very inclined to trust you right now.”

Jamison titters. “Okay, so maybe you have a point, but what’s it between businessmen, eh? Business ain’t about trust, it’s about mutual benefit.”

“Do you even have two sisters?”

“Sure I do,” Jamison says fervently. “Love ‘em to death I do, though they seem to have an unhealthy obsession with the loo. Can never get ‘em to shut up, either. Always buzzing in my ears. Like a couple of flies, they are.”

He lets out a loud cackle that’s muffled by the floorboards and Mako suddenly feels quite comfortable resting all 250 kilograms of himself on Jamison’s spine. How odd.

He lets the guy giggle into the floorboards, takes this opportunity to sit up and reach for the discarded duffel bag.

“Oi,” Jamison snaps suddenly. “Don’t you touch that, that’s my shit.”

Mako shoots him a skeptical glance. “You seem to like touching other people’s shit just fine.”

“That’s different,” Jamison mutters, but it lacks conviction.

One point for old Mako Rutledge.

He can’t say he’s dying to go rummaging through some Junker’s bag from hell but it’s so lumpy and misshapen that there could be anything in here. Anything of his, like his meager collection of movies or the digital clock he keeps on his nightstand—or things that could kill him when he turns his back, like a couple of submachine guns and a grenade launcher, for all he knows. He has to take one for the team. He has to look inside.

Mako steels himself, tugs at the zipper, and… well… he lets his shoulders relax. He’s not quite sure what he’s looking at, to be honest. There’s a lot of junk in here, but what else did he expect? Scrap metal and stolen goods; a crushed packet of expired Tim Tams and an unmarked bottle of clear liquid; several plastic lighters and a notepad that’s nearly out of paper; a small toolbox filled with all sorts of things. The can of spray paint is still where Jamison dropped it but Mako finds a custom pouch fashioned out of duct tape for it inside the duffel bag.

Nothing of his so far, Mako’s pleased to see, but he has one last place to check. It’s a big pocket on the outside of the bag that gives the thing its lumpy looks. He pops open the velcro and peers inside to find a whole pile of weird spheres the size of oranges. Kind of like giant marbles in a bag, really. He pulls one out with a frown and lets it sit in the palm of his hand.

He almost thinks it’s a rock at first thanks to Jamison’s stunt with the trap the other night, but it’s a stupid thought. Yes, it has a painted face that smiles up at him, but it’s made out of smooth metal. He can’t make heads or tails of it when he turns it around under the porch light, can’t see an opening of any sort. It rattles faintly when he shakes it by his ear, so he knows it’s not empty.

“Hey,” he says, lowers the sphere so Jamison can see it. “What’s this?”

He doesn’t much like the way Jamison’s face contorts.

“Oi, don’t touch those! You crazy? You wanna get us both killed? Thought farmers were supposed to be good at self preservation. Put that back. Jesus Christ.”

Mako’s not really in the mood to probe further—he’s tired, his back hurts, tackling Jamison to the ground gave him a headache—so he quietly slips the thing back into the bag with its brethren.

“Listen,” Jamison says, and Mako tunes him out without a second thought. He twists around until he’s straddling Jamison backwards, facing his legs, and reaches for the prosthetic.

Mako’s not afraid to get dirty. He cleans animal feces every day, he’s fucking murdered people with his bare hands, but he almost doesn’t want to touch Jamison’s prosthetic leg. The metal is rusted all the way up the shaft, splotchy with dirt and stains and dents and God knows what else. It’s probably a hotbed for diseases—and what the hell, there’s not even a foot at the end. It looks like there might’ve been at some point but now it’s just a sad, tetanus-infested peg leg. Mako has no idea how Jamison manages to get around with this thing, let alone outrun him through sand.

“Hey,” says a shrill voice somewhere in the real world. “Hey, careful with that.”

_It’s a little late for that_ , Mako thinks as he frowns down at the trap embedded in Jamison’s metal ankle. He grabs the trap by the jaws, feels his muscles bulge as he pries them apart, but, ah… Hmm. Mako frowns a little deeper, tries a little harder. The steel jaw starts to cut into the calloused pads of his fingers without budging and he lets go. Well. No worries. Jamison doesn’t have anywhere he needs to go right now anyway.

“Got a guy sittin’ on me and I don’t even know his name,” Jamison’s saying. “Chivalry really is dead.”

“The thief’s talking about chivalry,” Mako mutters.

“I’m not a thief, I’m a scavenger. I scavenge.”

“It’s not scavenging if you’re taking somebody else’s shit.”

“Who says I’ve ever taken anyone else’s shit before?”

“Right,” Mako says. “Okay. Hope you like jail.”

“No, no, no,” Jamison cries, and he claws at the floor like he loves it down there when Mako tries to haul him to his feet. “You can’t, I’ll die in there, you’ll kill me!”

Now that Mako thinks about it, he’s not wrong. If the Liberators are looking for him, they’ll find him when he can’t escape, but…

“Should’ve thought of that before you stole from me.”

With that, Mako grabs him around the waist and hauls him over his shoulder. He’s surprisingly light for his height, but Mako supposes he shouldn’t have expected more from a Junker. Jamison pounds fists against his back, kicks out like his life depends on it. He does with one foot, anyway, because the trap is still clamped around his prosthetic leg.

“You’re a crazy person,” is the latest cry of outrage Mako hears by his ear as he reenters the house.

_Kind of hypocritical._

“Hauling me off to your closet full of corpses, eh? I’m just another body to add to the pile, right? I knew it. Fuck you.”

It’s easy to ignore the fists hammering against his shoulder blades. Harder to ignore the shrill voice in his ear.

“I can’t be cooped up, it’s not good for me! C’mon, be reasonable, have a heart!”

_Haven’t had one of those in a while._

“I—I’ll work for you, I’ll pay it off!”

Mako pauses in front of the bathroom, two hands clamped around the bony body on his shoulder. He frowns.

“How is _me_ giving _you_ money going to get my array fixed?”

“Don’t ask me,” Jamison says. “I’ve never had a job before, okay?”

“Never had a bath, either.”

“Now that’s just rude.”

Without further ado, Mako dumps him unceremoniously to the bathroom floor. It’s nothing roomy, just big enough for Mako to move around in, but if Jamison gets thirsty he has the tap, and if he has to piss—well, he’s in the right place. It’s infinitely nicer than the cell Harris has waiting for him but that doesn’t stop Jamison from looking around the place like the walls are caked in shit.

“Hang on,” he says. “The hell’s this?”

“It’s called a toilet.”

“I know what a dunny is you absolute cock.”

“It’s late,” Mako says flatly. “My car broke down. I’ll call the sheriff in the morning.”

“Sorry—‘Scuse me, hello? I must’ve finally lost my marbles ‘cause for some reason it seems to me like some old bastard is locking me in his bathroom!”

“Goodnight,” is all Mako says before he shuts the door, and the last thing he sees is eyes like embers glaring at him in the dark.

 

* * *

 

When Mako starts awake the first thing he does is bang the back of his head against the wall. He stifles a groan as he rubs his poor skull, stifles another one as he leans forward to rub his poor spine. While he’s at it, he leans onto his leg and rubs his poor ass, too. Why did he think sleeping on the floor was a good idea? It’s never been a good idea, not even in his younger days. Horrible idea. Rightful punishment, probably. He rubs his ass again.

The hallway is pitch black, lit only by the meager sliver of moonlight creeping in through the distant kitchen window, and it takes him a moment of squinting around in the darkness to remember why he’s even out here. The night is perfectly still, so tranquil that it almost feels wrong to disturb it, but what choice does he have? He can hear quiet scratching and rattling right by his head and he looks over to find the knob on the bathroom door trembling like it’s being jostled from the other side. He doesn’t need to wonder what woke him up on such a quiet night.

He glances down at the cracked watch around his wrist. Two in the morning. The next groan is one he can’t stifle.

With the grace of a corpse rising from the dead, Mako pulls himself to his feet. He lifts the mask hanging around his neck into place across his mouth, fishes the keyring from his pocket, and unlocks the door.

Jamison looks up from where he’s kneeling on the floor, one of Mako’s precious few bobby pins bent and mangled in his fingers.

“You hardly gave me a chance,” he says, looking properly offended.

Mako stretches out his hand, palm up. “Give that to me.”

“Hmm,” Jamison says thoughtfully, and taps his chin. “Actually, I think I’ll keep it.” Mako feels his whole face twitch as the bobby pin is pointedly slipped into a ratty pocket.

“Don’t you sleep?” Mako mutters hoarsely.

Jamison scowls. “Don’t _I_ sleep? What about you? I was being damn quiet, coulda had the door open if you’d just given me a minute.”

Mako crosses his arms. “You’re doing a shit job of convincing me to trust you, y’know.”

The venom vanishes from Jamison’s face as wide eyes take its place. He lets out a soundless gasp as if he’s only just remembered and his metal hand dives into his pocket. It returns with the battered bobby pin pinched between its fingers like it’s made of glass and he offers it up to Mako, still kneeling. When Mako regards him with little more than tight lips and a raised eyebrow, he carefully tucks it into the pocket of Mako’s shorts.

“There!” he says with a titter and a greasy smile. “No harm done.”

“Plenty of harm done. You broke my solar panel.”

Jamison throws his head back to groan. “Not this again. You and your bloody solar panels, I swear to shitting Christ. What’s so important about one fucking solar panel that you’ve got to lock a guy up in your toilet dungeon? You’ve got just about a thousand of ‘em out there, what’s gonna happen if you’re only missing one?”

“This farm,” Mako says darkly, “powers most of the town. Downed panels add up. _Everything_ adds up.”

“Great, well, you’re welcome for not taking the whole bloody thing then,” Jamison snaps. “Pleasure doing business with you. Cheers.”

Mako frowns. “Why didn’t you take the whole thing? Why just the stand?”

Jamison shrugs. “S’all I needed, wasn’t it?”

“What for?”

“To prop up me table at home.”

Mako sighs and rubs at the pounding that’s going mad in his temple. “You couldn’t have used a stick or something?”

“No fun in a plain old stick,” Jamison says with a grin.

Mako worries that if he stands here much longer he’s going to wind up tackling him again. That probably means its time to end this. He tries to back out, gets the door halfway shut before a quiet voice on the other side makes him pause.

“Needed the wires for me arm, though.”

Despite the exhaustion weighing down his eyelids, Mako rubs his eye and opens the door again. Just a tiny bit—just enough to see the gangly thing sitting on his bathroom floor with his hands in his lap. The metal one taps a wayward rhythm into the linoleum. Mako nods down at it.

“That arm?”

“Nah, not this one. I’m workin’ on a better one in my shop.” A little grin tugs at his cracked lips. “Gonna give it a sweet paint-job and everything.”

Mako frowns. “You make your own prosthetics?”

“Sure do! Made my leg, too. Seen better days, it has, but she’ll be right. Probably. Hopefully.”

“You’re a mechanic.”

“You could say that.”

Mako hesitates, then plunges. “You any good?” he says, and Jamison shoots him a crooked grin.

“The best.”

Mako pauses to consider this because at some point—he’s not sure when—something changed. This guy… he can’t be older than thirty, and now that he’s here, in Mako’s bathroom, he’s not just a smirking shadow in the night anymore. He’s a person with Tim Tams in his bag and clunky prosthetics he made himself. Christ, Mako’s gone soft, but there’s something that doesn’t sit right with him about turning Jamison over to the police anymore and that, at least, has nothing to do with how young or unfortunate the Junker might be.

Really, it’s about the Liberators, because everything is always about them in the end. The chains they use are a coincidence—imagery from their golden days—but they have an iron grip on this little town. They steal, they extort, they threaten, they hurt. They make promises, and they always come through. Enforcers in the dead of night, silent save for the screams of their choppers. Everyone hears them but by then it’s already too late. Mako remembers. Roadhog remembers. The terrified cries of his victims—blood on his hands.

Throwing Jamison in jail would just be a roundabout way of handing him over to the Liberators, and Mako swore he would never do them any favors again. He doesn’t really care if the general store loses a few snacks overnight anyway, doesn’t care if old Emily and Logan can’t find their microwave in the morning. Harris will be furious with him, but he’d much rather anger her than please Jackhammer and her cronies. All he really wants is his solar field in optimal shape again, and Jamison did offer to repair it.

He hopes he doesn’t regret this.

Mako sighs in resignation as he leans against the door frame, arms crossed over his broad chest. “You still want to make a deal?” he says, and the smile that lights up Jamison’s face brightens his eyes and vanishes the dark bags beneath them. Makes him look like a different person.

“You know it, mate.”

“Not your mate.”

“’Course not, mate,” he says earnestly.

Oh boy. Mako contains his enthusiasm.

“Okay,” he says. “You’re going to fix what you broke. Don’t care how you get the parts, that’s not my problem. My array gets fixed, you don’t go to jail.”

_Or get mauled by the Liberators._

To his surprise, Jamison frowns.

“What, that’s it?”

“Yeah, that’s it. Why? Not what you wanted to hear?”

“No, it’s just,” Jamison says uneasily. “Dunno. You kinda got me life in the palm of your hand here, mate. Kinda expected you to take advantage of that. Not that you should go getting any ideas,” he snaps hurriedly.

“No ideas,” Mako says, and he’s unsurprised but a little hurt that someone would think so little of him. It makes his voice go just a bit softer. “That’s the deal. You fix my array and I won’t rat you out. Can you do it?”

“Fuck yeah, I can do it.”

Mako juts out his hand. “Shake on it.”

Jamison stares for a moment, stiff all over, like he’s worried the hand might bite him. But Mako just waits, silent and patient, until Jamison finds the nerve to reach out with his prosthetic.

Mako clamps down on those metal fingers until they threaten to give.

“If you fuck off without holding up your end,” he says darkly, “I’ll take your arm to prop up my table.”

Jamison titters, and his grin doesn’t reach his eyes. “Can’t you, er, what was it? Just find a stick or something?”

“Do we have a deal?”

He nods fervently. “Deal, mate.”

With that, Mako releases him. He backs out of the bathroom without another word, ignoring Jamison’s cry of protest when he locks him in again.

“You’re fucking kidding me with this shit,” says a displeased voice on the other side of the door.

“Let me sleep.”

This time, Mako grabs one of the cushions from the couch before settling down in the hallway again. He closes his eyes, ears pricked for any telltale sounds of an attempted escape… but he hears only quiet shuffling from inside the bathroom.

After an eternity, sleep finally takes him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> check out my art blog if you want to see art of this story, and as always, thanks for reading!
> 
> octonart.tumblr.com/tagged/harvesting-the-sun


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